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Announcer: Unflinching.

Unafraid.

Unfiltered.

Unforgettable.

Cinemax Reel Life.

Subject matters.

And now, the Cinemax Reel Life documentary...

(water gurgling)

(helicopter blades whirring)

Faith Puglisi: That morning when I got up

was one of the hottest days, you know.

That, uh, that summer was wicked hot.

And, of course in the projects,

it didn't matter what season it was.

Winter or summer, those radiators were clanking,

and the heat was coming, and it was unbearable.

The other children had all gone off to the pool.

With the stipulation: they stay together,

and Andy was gonna join them.

And I was making some soup for the baby,

and I said, "Do you want some soup, hon?"

And he says, "Yeah, Mom. Yeah."

We sat down at the table,

and he was right directly across from me.

And while I'm feeding the baby,

I heard this ungodly slurp from across the table,

and my head turned to look at him,

and normally I would have scolded him.

And I looked at him.

He's like, "Uh-oh, here it comes," you know.

"She's gonna," you know, "get me for this," you know.

And instead I just...

I looked at him and I just said, "No, honey.

Go ahead and eat your soup."

And I went upstairs to put her down for her nap,

and when I came downstairs,

Andy had already left for the pool.

And that was the last time I was to...

ever see him again.

(helicopter blades whirring)

(siren wailing)

(indistinct police radio)

Officer (on radio): Can you make a notification for me?

(indistinct police radio)

Melanie Perkins: On a hot summer day in 1976,

a 10-year-old boy vanished from a crowded swimming pool

In Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Man (on radio): Greg, Channel 9.

Melanie: The city was mobilized

into an all-out round-the-clock search

that included the National Guard,

Special Forces Army Reserve Unit,

underwater dive teams,

CB truckers, neighbors,

relatives, and friends.

Officer (on radio): ...about nine years old.

Dispatch (on radio): 231 to 26 at Lexington and Wickersham.

21-23.

Melanie: The search lasted for 6 days,

but the boy was never found.

His name is Angelo Puglisi...

and he was my friend.

♪♪

♪♪

(indistinct chatter)

I don't remember anything in particular that we did that day.

It was really really hot. I remember that.

It was,like,really hot.

But we were all at the pool.

And you almost didn't want to get out of the water 'cause it was so hot.

The second you got out, you wanted to jump back in.

I had been there for awhile,

and I was getting pretty hungry,

and I wanted to go home.

I asked Andy if he wanted to walk home with me,

and he said no, he didn't.

He was gonna stay at the pool longer.

And I remember being a little bit irritated

that he did that,

because normally Andy was the type of kid

that if you did ask him to do something for you,

he would do it, you know, just to be helpful.

And I remember leaving,

and Andy was still sitting in the sun.

♪♪

Faith: Sometime around 3:00, 3:30,

somewhere around there,

I'm not really sure of the time,

the other children all come piling through the door,

and I'm counting heads,

and there's one missing.

"Where's your brother Andy?"

I remember going home around 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon,

getting something to eat,

and then going back over to the pool

trying to see if I can find Andy.

Faith: When they all showed up once again without Andy,

I was furious.

My response was,

"You tell your brother to get his ass home now!

Don't make me go over there."

Michael: The lifeguards couldn't tell me

if they saw him or not 'cause they were just too busy

trying to take care of all the other kids at the pool.

I started looking for Andy around 5:00,

and that's approximate.

Um...

I remember walking the whole-- the whole projects

calling his name, calling his name,

and asking everybody I saw.

"Have you seen Andy? Have you seen Andy?"

You know, and a couple of times I think kids responded

with oh, they had seen him over at the stadium.

And I remember walking down that street by the stadium.

And there was a playground over there, and calling his name,

and still no Andy.

Melanie: As it started to get a little bit darker,

you might hear the occasional,"Andy?" you know.

People were starting to look for him a little bit,

but-- but, you know, I didn't really think much of it.

I figured he was gonna get in trouble.

I'm thinking, "Well, maybe he's just at a friend's house,

and lost track of time."

I could see that she was getting upset that, you know,

he wasn't home by 8:00, and then 9:00.

Faith: I'm thinking a lot of different things,

you know, but it definitely was not like Andy.

One of my main concerns was he was an epileptic,

and did he have a seizure?

I didn't want to call the police

because I was just sure he was gonna walk in the door any minute.

So I called my family.

My ex-wife called, and...

So I got a hold of them,

and they told me that Andy hadn't come home yet,

and, "I'm worried."

Faith: I finally placed that call to the police

probably somewhere between 9:00 and 10:00.

So the initial questions:

"Well, are you sure he didn't run away?"

And, you know, "We can't do anything

until it's been 24 hours,"

and I was just like beside myself with, you know,

we're talking about a child here.

Went down there, argued with them,

tried to convince them that this was a serious case

whether the child was gone one hour or a day.

In 24 hours, a child can be across the country.

Melanie: The Lawrence Police didn't even

send out a detective until 3:00 AM.

Michael: I got woken up by my mom,

and some, I guess, police officer,

and asking me, you know,

Who was Andy hanging around with at the pool that day?

Melanie: There was a knock on the door in the middle of the night,

early morning, and it was the police.

And they had me and my brother, Jeff

come downstairs into the kitchen.

And they were asking us if we had seen Andy,

and when was the last time we had seen him.

Faith: And they asked for a picture.

And he says, "Oh, I'll bring you this picture back in the morning."

And I went, "The heck with that.

Bring me my son."

It's a picture.

What do I care about the picture?

You know, I want my child.

Faith: The search was called off

after about five or six days.

I was devastated.

I was devastated. I was frightened.

I knew I couldn't afford myself

the luxury of falling apart.

Because if I fell apart, who was gonna see to it

that everybody did what they were supposed to do,

and that meant doing everything they could.

Nothing was ever found.

We couldn't find a towel. We couldn't find clothing.

Nothing. There--

He literally vanished without a trace.

Like a puff of smoke.

(film reel whirring)

Melanie: I was nine years old when Andy disappeared.

I felt so helpless and so powerless.

I vividly remember thinking to myself, "When I grow up,

I'm gonna try to find him."

In 1998,

I went back to Lawrence to begin my search for Andy.

I had no idea that my journey would reopen a case

considered closed for more than 20 years.

Lawrence is a mill town about 30 miles from Boston.

It's one of the poorest cities in the country.

-Hi. -Hi.

-How are you? -You look good.

You, too. Hi, Linda.

How are you? Good to see you.

-Long time no see. -Long time.

You look good.

Melanie: These are the kids I grew up with.

-Nice to see you! -You, too.

I asked them to get together

to talk about Andy's disappearance.

Most of us haven't seen each other in over 25 years.

Yeah, it's been a long time.

Woman: And then you get together

and it's like you never left each other.

-Right. It's been 30 years. -You know?

Look at-- you guys were so cute.

Sarah Conway: He was my first boyfriend in the projects.

Tricia DeCaro: No, no, she thought he was her first.

He was my first.

-Oh, right. -(laughter)

Her mind fell through.

Melanie: PJ!

How's it going?

(chattering)

It's almost like-- it's almost like a magnet.

You drive by there sometimes, it just kind of pulls you over.

You start going down memory lane a little bit.

I drove by, and it was the middle of January,

the door and those windows were still wide open.

(laughing)

Jamie Durso: The heat!

The heat was always on.

(chattering)

♪♪

Melanie: We grew up in the stadium projects.

There had to be over 100 buildings,

and each building had, like, six apartments.

So, I mean, you knew, you know, who was fighting with who.

You could hear people's televisions.

You knew who was having what for dinner,

'cause you could smell it.

Pretty much every house had a kid.

So that makes for 300 or 400 or more kids

in one small area.

Most of us came from single-parent homes

and were pretty much unsupervised.

We were a community of children amongst ourselves,

and you know, if one of your friends wasn't home,

you had half a dozen more to choose from.

If you wanted a football game, boom, you had a football game.

Jamie Durso: We could have played five sports in one day.

We played hockey, football, street ball.

After supper, hide and go seek.

- Relivio. -Woman: Every day.

Jamie: Kick the can.

Melanie: But one of the best parts

of living in the stadium projects

was the state pool.

Our pool.

That was like-- the stadium projects

felt like this was our pool.

Even though it was a state pool

and kids from all over the city came,

it was right across the street from the projects.

Bill: We couldn't pay the money to get in,

so we always had to go underneath the fence to get in.

Somebody would pull it up for ya.

Either pull it up for ya, or you'd have somebody looking out

so you could go under when no one was looking.

Come on, how many times did we go in at 12:00 at night?

Jeff: That was a regular thing, the after-hours thing.

-I remember that. -Always. We always went in.

You had to be in the clique, though.

Right. Yeah, you had to be in the clique.

-You weren't in it. -I know I wasn't.

(laughing)

Melanie: I felt like it was the best place in the world to live,

and so did the community of kids that I lived with,

'cause, you know,

despite whatever our home lives might have been like,

we all had each other,

and it was just a blast.

In the summer of '76,

a new boy moved into the projects.

And right away, I had a huge crush.

Michael Conway: I liked Andy, and we, you know, kind of hung out,

but I was a little mad

because I liked you, and you liked him.

-And that-- that bugged me. -(laughter)

Andy was just so quiet, shy, and sweet, you know?

Everyone loved him, cause he always did something for somebody.

Tricia: I remember him always having that little baby.

Always had Mandy in the carriage.

In the carriage. I remember.

Jamie: He was the father figure of the family.

Yeah, and he would shop,

and he'd bring home three bags with one hand

and his brother in the other.

Man: At 10 years old.

Tricia: I mean, he was a cute, cute kid.

And when I look at all these pictures of us

when we were all kids and stuff, and...

could have been any one of us.

♪♪

Michael: Just tagging along with Andy is half the fun, you know.

Just a fun kid to be around.

He was trying to get me into baseball.

My brother was a big Red Sox fan.

He taught me how to swim.

We were both big wrestling buffs.

He was my best friend.

I-- I can't say enough about him.

You know, I just don't know how to put it into words.

Melanie: Andy's house was only about 100 yards from the pool.

Where the ball fields are now

is what used to be the City Dump.

It had huge sand and gravel piles

surrounded by woods,

the Shawsheen River, and the highway.

Jeff: You look at it now,

and it looks like it's pretty well laid out,

and it's landscaped.

But at the time when Andy was abducted,

seconds, I mean, you know,

literally within seconds,

you could have been in the woods.

You know, within minutes you could have been in the river.

Five minutes or less,

he could have been on the highway in a car.

-Bill: Less than five minutes. -Jeff: Look. It's right there.

Bill: You can see the guardrail

all the way around the parking lot here,

and there's a hill that goes down about 15 feet.

Soon as you hit the bottom of that hill, it's woods,

and you're out of sight.

Yeah.

Melanie: The next morning, you know, I woke up,

I remember going outside,

and I mean everybody was outside looking for him.

And everybody, like, the adults, had this, like...

you know,just this pinched look on their face.

You don't usually see the adults get it, you know?

So when you see that look on all their faces,

it gets pretty scary,

and you know something's wrong.

I can remember, too, a lot of the kids

playing a part in the search themselves,

Pairing up with detectives or National Guardsmen

or CB-ers or something like that.

And they'd, like, kind of break you off into teams

and put you with someone to help.

And all the kids got together in the woods and held hands

and walked, like, through the thick grass

and stuff like that looking for him,

calling his name, and stuff like that. Yeah.

Jeff: The end of it, when people just started giving up,

was what I remember the most.

People were starting to realize

that they weren't gonna find him.

I still wonder.

I spend nights thinking, you know,

about what could've happened,

and trying to remember anything that--

that I have forgot, you know?

Nothing new. It's just that emptiness and wondering.

(indistinct chatter)

Man: It was a big part of our lives,

and it changed us forever.

And after it was all said and done,

it was just life as usual.

It was like nothing had ever even occurred, you know?

-Man: Yeah, you're right. -Tricia: You're right.

Tricia: You are 100% right.

Melanie: That was before there were milk cartons

with missing children's pictures on them.

It was before there was a National Center

for Missing and Exploited Children.

You didn't hear about that kind of thing happening.

People didn't expect that kind of thing to happen.

And after he disappeared,

I wouldn't walk on the same street.

I always felt like he was over there somewhere.

I never went swimming in the pool again either.

Faith: I remember you calling me,

but when I got off the phone...

It was sort like, "Pinch me. I'm dreaming.

And is this real?"

You know, here is a grown woman telling me

that, uh, she adored my son,

and they were kind of considered sweethearts that summer.

I thought, "Wow. Andy had a girlfriend."

He impacted your life.

I'm not alone with my search.

I'm not alone with my longing

for answers and missing of Andy.

Melanie: Andy's disappearance is considered a cold case

by the Lawrence Police Department.

I was told there were several suspects,

but no one had actually been charged with Andy's abduction.

After 22 years, I don't think the case is gonna be solved.

Short of a confession that we can use in court,

I don't think we are going to get anywhere with this.

Sorry to say we just can't, you know,

put too much more time into this.

It's just not going anywhere.

(microfilm reader whirring)

Melanie: From the beginning, the police were convinced

the answers to Andy's disappearance

were right there in the projects.

After all, Andy was a poor kid from a broken home.

And his mother was involved

in a bi-racial relationship at the time.

Faith: We were all suspects.

One police officer basically came right out and asked me

did I murder my son.

And, you know, I really had a lot of respect for him,

and I told him that.

I said, "You know what? I thought I'd been asked

"everything from every angle.

"I'll give you credit for that.

"But no.

I did not murder my son."

Always with the police department,

I was kept in the dark, and I was very young.

Now, today, I would deal with it very differently,

but back then I was very young

and intimidated easily by authoritarians.

Melanie: In the late '70s,

a woman named Elaine Nowacki

claimed to be channeling Andy's voice.

Faith: I knew nothing about her until this hit the newspaper.

And it says right here is where it started out.

"A women fell into a trance as soon as she approached

"the mound of rubber.

When she spoke, it was the voice of a crying child."

(Elaine speaking, crying)

(Police Officer speaking)

(Elaine speaking)

(Elaine sobbing)

Faith: This was supposed to be my son, you know,

and I wasn't even told

this garbage was gonna be in the paper.

Melanie: Then in the '80s,

despite a number of leads that have never been followed up,

the Lawrence Police hired a psychic

to work on Andy's case.

Faith: Mike Carelli brought Andrew Barnhart,

who was a psychic.

I was told-- and I was apprehensive about this

because I'd already been, uh, exploited

by a few supposed psychics--

But Mike Carelli gave me assurance

that he had been cleared through the FBI and worked for the FBI.

From the first moment I talked to him,

he started giving me information about the area,

uh, map numbers, descriptions,

physical deformities of people

who were perhaps involved in this--

Things that nobody could have possibly known.

There's always these cold areas

around where bodies are buried.

I like to refer to it as the unknown laws of nature.

Something that we don't understand right now,

but it's more--

some people are more sensitive to it than others.

I gave a list

of, um, locations, uh,

and, uh, landmarks.

And never being to Lawrence,

with me being absolutely correct

on the items that I saw,

it, uh, piqued his attention.

Faith: The psychic, although he didn't want to talk to me,

needed things that were near and dear to Andy,

things that Andy cared about, mementos.

I wanted to rush right out and get a few things right then and there,

but he said, "No, no. Take your time,"

He says, "And I'll come back."

And when he came back, I handed him a paper bag.

And in the paper bag was a notebook of Andy's

where he had written some poems and stuff,

and his bank book,

his baby book...

um...

and, uh, and a toy.

It was one of his favorite ones when he was a baby.

Barnhart: I saw numbers, a poodle,

and an old-fashioned large bread van.

I feel that Andy was gonna be in a shallow grave,

and I feel that the gentleman responsible for it

would still be caught and convicted of the crime.

Melanie: Barnhart had police compose a sketch

based on his vision of the killer.

Carelli: He said, now, you gotta understand--

He said, "The boy is dead, but he wasn't murdered

in the strict sense of the word where I kill you."

He said, "Something was stuffed in his mouth, and he choked."

He says, "But," he says, "he didn't just choke."

He says-- he says, "I see him having a seizure or something,"

He says, "But he kind of drowned or choked," he said,

"after-- after having something stuck in his mouth."

And I found out later, and again nobody knew this,

that-- and you may remember, I don't know,

that Andy was apparently slightly epileptic

and had had epileptic seizures in the past.

Melanie: Carelli found Barnhart's visions credible enough

that he convinced authorities to dig the area near the pool.

But shortly after the dig began,

the local news media showed up.

There was a circus, a circus.

The only thing it lacked was vendors.

It was really-- no respect, you know,

for what we were trying to do.

Barnhart: It was actually interfering

with my ability to work as such.

The more electronic equipment that I'm around,

it does effect the ability that I have.

Faith: I never saw Andy's belongings again.

Mike Carelli broke his promise.

He-- very apologetic.

Melanie: The psychic said that Andy's things were ruined

in a hurricane or tornado

or something that had happened at his house

that evidently he didn't foresee.

Most things Barnhart predicted in the '80s

had already been printed in the papers in the '70s.

But Carelli insists

Barnhart didn't have access to the information.

Both Barnhart and Carelli said the dig was called off

because of the unwanted media attention.

It would be another 17 years

before the media would be interested in Andy again.

(theme music plays)

A 10-year-old Lawrence boy disappears mysteriously in 1976.

It's been almost three decades since Andy Puglisi vanished.

Now police and DA's office claim

they're refocusing on the case.

I remember being with him at the pool.

Reporter: It's a mystery that's haunted not only his family,

but a childhood friend who spent the last two years

searching for answers.

(indistinct chatter)

Melanie: Suddenly Andy's case was considered worth reopening.

Molchan: Well, the Andy Puglisi case again came to light

right after the article in the "Lawrence Eagle Tribune."

What I did, basically,

was get a state trooper, Jack Garvin,

from the District Attorney's office,

and we pulled out all the files, reviewed them.

I received information

I believe was from you, Melanie,

that you were interested in reopening the case.

I went back downstairs

and looked at any files that we might have had.

We had some information that was received.

We kind of brought this back up to the front burner for awhile.

Melanie: Once the case was reopened,

I asked the police about a letter in Andy's file

from 1989.

It said there was a prison inmate

who had confessed to the murder of a Lawrence boy.

There wasn't much information about the guy.

All I knew was his name was Charles Pierce.

(microfilm whirring)

I found out Charles Pierce was a convicted necrophiliac.

He had killed a little girl in Boxford,

less than 10 miles from where Andy disappeared.

He was an itinerant carnival worker

connected to a series of child murders

across the country.

Here was a child murderer

confessing to authorities

about the murder of a little boy from Lawrence

and no one had been out to question him about Andy.

The Mass Correctional Institute in Shirley, please.

It's called MCI, not the Souza-Baranowski Center.

Yes, I'm interested in coming to see an inmate today,

and I want to determine

whether he's at the medium security or the minimum.

Charles Pierce.

Mm-hmm.

You don't have anybody by the name

Charles E. Pierce there?

Yes, I hope so. I'm trying to find an inmate

that I'd like to come visit today.

I believe he's in that house services unit, but I'm not sure.

His name, Pierce, P-I-E-R-C-E, first name, Charles.

Really?

Because last-- just last week he was in the medium,

so there's no way to find out where he is?

(sighs)

Hi, Sergeant Miranda.

Hi, Sergeant Miranda, I just spoke with you a moment ago

regarding Charles Pierce.

Hi, my name's Melanie.

I just called the Souza-Baranowski,

and they said they put him into the computer,

and he's listed as being at MCI medium security.

Oh, unbelievable.

They say he's not there.

Bye.

Well, there goes that idea.

I'm not gonna go visit him today.

Who knows where he is.

Apparently, he was in the morgue.

Charles Pierce died on February 18, 1999

at 1:45 in the morning.

After spending more than 20 years in prison,

he died of prostate cancer.

But just hours before Pierce died,

the Lawrence Police finally went out

and questioned him about Andy.

Announcer: This is "The Ten O'Clock News" on WB 56.

Reporter: He spent the past two decades behind bars

for the kidnapping and murder of a little girl.

Then just before Charles Pierce died,

he confessed to other murders

and told police where he buried the bodies.

Listening to him, listening to him talk,

I believe that he did kill kids.

Where he killed them, times he killed them,

where he buried them, don't know.

This guy told me that he would kill the kids

and then have sex with them.

Never put it in terms of raping the kids.

He always said that he had sex with the kids.

Mr. Pierce stated that he had been over to the Higgins Pool

to observe some of the young children from time to time.

I showed him a picture of Andy that we had from the file.

At that time, he became upset with me

and that's when he no longer wanted to go on

with the interview.

Melanie: Charles Pierce's deathbed confession

didn't lead directly to Andy.

But it turns out he was acquainted

with another pedophile that police had already considered

a suspect in Andy's abduction,

Wayne W. Chapman.

Garvin: He stated that he knew Wayne Chapman.

He said that Wayne Chapman had been in the area.

That he had seen him frequently

while Pierce was working with carnivals

and was working also with Woolworths 5 and 10,

which is on Essex Street in Lawrence.

Melanie: The Lawrence detective

who worked on Andy's original case,

Captain Fitzpatrick, had since died.

He reportedly believed Wayne Chapman

was the most likely suspect in Andy's abduction,

but I wasn't really sure why.

In 1976, Wayne Chapman

was a 28-year-old janitor from Rhode Island.

On September 5, he was arrested in Waterloo, New York

for a minor traffic violation.

On his dashboard, in plain view,

were dozens of Polaroid pictures

of naked children in various poses.

Police searched his van

and found a cache of child pornography,

rope, tape,

handcuffs,

eight millimeter home movies,

a fake police badge, and starter pistol.

Wayne Chapman became a suspect

in the disappearance of several children.

He was arrested just two weeks after Andy disappeared.

Al Mintz: I received a teletype

that this individual had been arrested

in upper state New York, in Waterloo.

After I interviewed several children in Providence,

the neighborhood where Wayne had lived,

we found out that he had been involved with sexual assaults,

sexual encounters under the pretense of running

a 4-H group for children.

I went on an investigative trip to New York

to-- to interview him.

He talked about a lot of towns and a lot of places,

and each place he was, there were children involved.

And multiple children involved.

Melanie: These are images recorded by Chapman

as he stalked children in parks and playgrounds.

Mintz: You gotta remember he's on the prowl,

and he's mobile.

He found a group of kids in a park, for example--

This is what he told me--

He would go up like he was in a panic and say to them,

you know, that he'd lost his dog,

and it was a cute little dog.

He usually described a little white poodle.

And he would say he would give them $5 or $2 or whatever

to the kid that helped him find the dog.

And then he would send them off different--

"You go this way. You go this way. You come with me,"

and they would all go in different directions

while the rest is history.

That kid that went with him would be a victim.

Melanie: In August of 1975,

the summer before Andy was abducted,

two boys were lured away from the state pool in Lawrence

and raped in the nearby woods.

The Lawrence police were unable to solve the crime at the time.

And unfortunately, no one thought to warn

the rest of the neighborhood kids

about the potential threat.

It wasn't until Wayne Chapman's random traffic arrest,

more than a year later,

that the boys finally got to see his mug shot

and identify him as the man who raped them.

Rape Victim: Some guy came up and asked us to help him find his dog.

And, you know, the timing was perfect, you know.

There's two kids, and we just happened to be looking for money

so that we could do something.

And so of course we said yeah, you know.

And we didn't think nothing of it.

And there seemed to be a bunch of other kids around,

and some of 'em came over

and stopped and talked to the guy,

so I figured, you know, they were all looking for the dog,

this guy's dog, too.

Went up into the woods and--

you know, that was probably

the biggest mistake I've ever made in my life.

And I can still remember begging to be let go

through that whole ordeal.

And-- and promising that we wouldn't tell anybody.

And him telling us that,

"You better not tell anybody."

And I can still remember

being face-down on the ground

and trying to pull a rock out of the ground,

and I couldn't get it.

Whether it was too far in the ground or just fear,

I don't know.

Um...

You know, in all my life,

I've never had that kind of fear.

I didn't want anything to happen to my friend.

That held me there mostly.

Just the fear of knowing that if I took off,

he was gonna end up dead.

(leaves crunching, sticks breaking)

While all this was going on, I could hear, you know,

a lot of noises in the woods like somebody walking around

or, you know, sticks breaking or a clicking noise.

And it just seemed that there was somebody else up there.

I can't really understand why he let us go

when so often it doesn't work out that way.

Melanie: In 1977,

Wayne Chapman was convicted of raping

the two Lawrence boys

and he became a suspect in Andy's disappearance.

Garvin: Wayne W. Chapman was considered a suspect

based on the crime that he had been convicted

of committing in the Lawrence area

in such a close proximity

to where Andy Puglisi had been reported missing.

Melanie: But Wayne Chapman was never charged

with Andy's abduction.

Instead he was convicted for the rape of the two boys

and was committed indefinitely

to the Massachusetts Treatment Center

for the Sexually Dangerous--

A sort of mental hospital for sex offenders.

Chapman was what we call

a fixated regressed pedophile.

That means that their main interest

in sexual partners

is children,

that it is compulsive,

and if on the street,

the average fixated regressed pedophile

has between 400 and 500 different victims.

I crawled into this guy's head.

I was able-- I was the only one that was able to get him to talk.

He indicated that his father was very cruel to him.

He told me about a bed-wetting episode that he had

where he would come in and snatch him out of bed

and take him out into three or four feet of snow

and make him just stand there in the cold.

And I found a plaque

where he had won perfect attendance in church

when he was younger.

But he also talked about

some girls sexually taking advantage of him

when he was about 10 or 11 years old.

In my opinion, Wayne Chapman was a very crafty man

who was actually a lot smarter than he presented.

He liked to present as kind of a victim,

as most pedophiles do.

Wayne liked to play the victim.

But Wayne had a history for being sadistic.

He could be very intimidating.

Mintz: I had searched his van

and found a tape of sort of a fantasy

where he was following a school bus with children

and fantasizing what he would like to do and what he has done.

(Chapman speaking)

Mintz: He was a predator,

and he was a very violent person.

What we think is being a violent assault

he said was an act of passion.

Beyond what he thought was an act of passion

would have been he got "a little carried away."

Melanie: There was a picture in Chapman's van

that looked like Andy

along with another critical piece of evidence.

When Chapman was arrested in New York,

the information I received

was that there was a bloody sock,

a bloody child's sock in his possession.

Mintz: Andy's mother was brought

to the Providence Police Station

by the Lawrence detectives.

And, um, when his mother observed those socks,

she collapsed, almost fainted.

And she said those were her daughter's socks,

and the reason she knows that those were the socks

that Andy was wearing

because they had made fun of him that day

that he'd gone to the pool about wearing those winter

high-knee socks going to the pool.

Faith: We drove down to the Providence Police Department

where Wayne Chapman was being held.

I felt like I could go there, and I would look at this man,

and I would figure it out, you know?

"Did you hurt my child?"

And I thought if he had even a speck of conscience,

he wouldn't be able to turn me away.

When we reached Providence Police Department,

everything kind of blew up in our faces.

Civil Liberties Union got involved.

They said his rights were being violated.

We were forbidden access,

and when we left Providence, you know,

the only thing we left with that I remember

were just one sock.

One navy blue knee sock

that looked like a little girls.

It had a stain on it that could possibly be blood.

Melanie: I turned out the picture in Chapman's van wasn't Andy.

The Lawrence police took the bloody sock

back to Massachusetts.

They sent it to the state police crime lab

where it sat for more than 20 years.

In the '70s, a bloody sock was just a bloody sock.

But obviously today, it has a lot more importance.

It can have DNA evidence in it.

We have been unable to locate the sock in New York,

Rhode Island, or in Massachusetts.

Evidence is usually discarded or destroyed

or given back to victims...

for a lot of reasons.

There's no solvability factor to 'em.

There's just no place to store it.

I mean, you'd need warehouses of it to store it.

It's just not practical.

Melanie: With Captain Fitzpatrick gone,

there was no one left to explain

inconsistencies in Andy's file.

There was a letter from the Providence police

that said Chapman was working the day Andy disappeared.

Mintz: His employment was a hospital in Providence,

and he was sort of on the janitorial staff.

And one of his functions was he worked the incinerator

where he incinerated lab animals.

And that was a little-- a little eerie.

Melanie: Then there were Chapman's timesheets.

According to hospital records,

he wasn't working the day Andy disappeared.

There was a memo in Andy's file

that said there were six eyewitnesses

putting someone who resembled Wayne Chapman

with Andy at the pool that day,

and that the Lawrence police were going to issue a murder warrant.

I'm aware of a person fitting the description

of Wayne W. Chapman,

uh, being placed at the pool

by-- by several potential witnesses,

uh, who were interviewed

a short time after, uh, Andy disappeared.

Melanie: So that would be another reason

that he would be considered a suspect?

That would be a very appropriate reason

why he would be considered a suspect, yes.

Melanie: A lifeguard identifies Chapman

from photos police showed her.

She says he had the strangest eyes she'd ever seen,

and that he came back the next day

asking why people were searching the area.

A mother reports her two young daughters

saw a man fitting Chapman's description

follow Andy into the boy's locker room

and out of the pool.

There were a lot of children who were witnesses that day.

But either the police didn't believe them

or didn't think to question them at the time.

I was leaving the pool,

and, um, I noticed that my bike was gone,

which actually it wasn't-- it was my sister's bike,

so if I had lost that,

then I would have been dead.

In that time, there was this guy.

He kept asking me if I could go help him look for a dog,

and I kept telling him no, that I couldn't,

because my bike was stolen.

And this guy,

who was still basically bugging me

to help him go look for his dog

just started to ask other kids,

and Andy, unfortunately, told the guy

that he would go help him look for the dog.

Mintz: I was digging through

some old files and boxes and stuff,

and I found tapes, audio tapes,

where I'm actually interviewing Chapman, talking to Chapman.

(tape squeaks)

(indistinct chatter on tape)

This is in Waterloo, New York.

Melanie: And when was this?

Mintz: 1976.

Mintz: Mm-hmm.

(Chapman continues speaking)

(tape ends)

Melanie: When Wayne Chapman was talking to Al Mintz,

he was under the influence of sodium amytal,

truth serum.

And though he didn't mention names,

and insisted he wasn't talking about Lawrence,

he was specific about certain details

including taking a boy from a pool

next to a gravel yard, river, and highway

with a much younger child.

A 1982 newspaper article mentions a younger child.

In the article, Mike Carelli said the boy

describes Wayne Chapman to a "T."

Even down to the scar over his eye.

It took several years to find this little boy

and convince him to tell me what happened that day.

Ray Clarke: We were leaving the pool, Andy and myself.

We were going towards the stadium projects.

There was this guy in front of the state pool

who said, "Can you help me find my dog?"

Andy said, "Sure."

So this guy pointed to the back of the state pool.

He said, "You two go that way,

and I go up this way."

Andy grabbed my hand,

and we went all the way down to the back

calling this dog.

We started to walk back towards the state pool.

We took a few steps,

and then he told me to run.

He said, "Go. Run,"

and I didn't know what was going on.

He started pushing on my back.

So I'm running.

As I got up the path a little bit,

I could see a couple people on the right side in the woods.

Well, he started to push me. "Go, go, go."

Those people had to move in the bush.

And they were starting to go towards the path where we were.

And he was scared. He was really scared. I could tell.

He was, like, trying to get me to go faster.

And I fell. I kept falling.

He could have easily just ran away from me

and left me there stranded.

But I could still feel him pushing on my back.

When I got to the top of the hill,

I turned to look, and he was gone.

I went back down the hill.

And I saw-- I saw Andy on a rock,

and two people were holding him--

holding him down.

I couldn't see their faces,

but he was crying and screaming.

And I'm calling for him, but he's not looking at me.

You know, and Andy-- I could see Andy screaming.

I could see him screaming at the top of his lungs,

and I couldn't do anything.

I didn't know what to do.

And it felt like I was standing there forever.

But, you know, it was a matter of minutes.

Felt like an eternity.

Wanted to get help,

but there was nobody there to help him.

I just started to run back up the hill.

There was no one else in the pool really.

It was,like,closed up.

No one even knew I was there.

I was just standing there crying, yelling for him.

I kept calling for him and calling for him.

Melanie: Ray was so traumatized by what he witnessed

that it took six years

before he was able to tell his story to the police.

To this day, he's convinced

the man in front of the pool

set him and Andy up

for the other two men in the woods.

There were no police reports in Andy's file

about Ray's testimony.

This was the first time I'd heard

that there could have been more than one person involved

in Andy's abduction.

In 1999,

two men sent me a letter

that said when they were kids,

they had seen what they called

a shallow grave in the woods

near where Andy disappeared.

When I met with them,

I found their story compelling enough

that I asked Jack Garvin to bring cadaver dogs

to the south Lawrence area.

Melanie: At the time, this was all woods here.

But there was still the drive that it's--

You know how we had to go around the school to get here?

Before that was a street that just came right down from the pool.

Prophet Street was open.

You could just drive right down here.

And they said it might have been within 20 feet.

They said they know it was on a rise,

so it might've been right over where that tree is

or it was right in this part.

They said it was a 4x6.

♪♪

(barks)

(barking)

(barking continues)

Melanie: This dog was the first of three dogs

brought out within a two-month period.

All three dogs reacted in the same area.

Kathy Barrett: Oh, he committed himself. He's into odor.

It's either human blood, human decomposition, human bone.

Garvin: The nutrients of a decomposing body would flow downhill.

The tree might have picked it up.

Sometime very very soon, I hope,

we'll be able to, uh, to probe the area with some ground radar.

Melanie: Jack Garvin brought in Dr. AnneMarie Mires

from the Mass. Medical Examiner's office.

Mires: See it?

Melanie: She's been instrumental in recovering the remains

of several missing children in Massachusetts.

Willing hands? Willing hands?

What researchers have found is that it's not uncommon

for children and individuals to be dumped

within a five-mile radius of where they were abducted.

Okay.

If you hit anything or hear anything that goes crunch, stop.

We have decided to excavate a small area

that appeared to have already been disturbed.

It looked like it was the size of a small grave.

Melanie: Ground penetrating radar is the most efficient way

to search a large area for human remains.

But on the day the team was scheduled to go out,

the equipment wasn't available.

So we don't have unlimited resources.

We don't have unlimited time.

So you have to utilize what you can.

We started with informants.

We started with a likely spot.

Melanie: While it may not have been

the most effective way to search for Andy.

I was just glad anyone was even looking for him at all.

Mires: What do you got?

This is wood. You can see that it's wood.

Bone would be hollow in the center,

but size, texture--

That's what he would be looking for.

And they were probably--

The only small bones that you'd have like this are in the hands,

right, and in the feet for a child.

(indistinct chatter)

This looked like an edge of something.

-Plywood. -Mires: It looks like finished wood.

Doesn't look like a bone to me.

Let's hope it's not an old coffin.

We got-- we got wood.

We got some sort of rotten wood.

We'll see.

(camera clicks)

This is what old coffins look like, though.

That's all that's left of them.

Okay, let's just get this stuff down and out.

Take a picture of this.

Melanie: They kept digging,

and the piece of wood was taken out.

It wasn't a coffin.

It was just an old piece of wood.

♪♪

There definitely was a pit here.

Was there a body in it? No.

Could there have been at one time?

Maybe, you know.

Hopefully, we'll see something with the soils,

but we may, we may not.

Awful disappointing just knowing that's what happens

when a body decomposes

is that it does leave a depression in the ground

a lot of times.

So there's a good chance

something might have been here...

at one time.

♪♪

Melanie: There was no where else to go.

I sent Wayne Chapman a letter

asking for an interview.

(helicopter blades whirring)

By classifying Chapman as a sexually dangerous person

for the rape of the Lawrence boys,

the police had been able to get him committed

to the treatment center

where they thought he would stay

for the rest of his life.

But Wayne Chapman was no longer at the treatment center.

He hired two private psychiatrists,

who, in 1991,

testified on his behalf

that he was no longer sexually dangerous.

The court ruled in Chapman's favor,

and he was transferred to a local prison.

We corresponded for a little while.

He asked me for my home phone number,

which I didn't feel comfortable giving him.

He said he didn't have anything to do

with Andy's disappearance

and that he didn't know anything about Lawrence.

He wanted to know whether he would have to register

as a sex offender,

and which states didn't have a sex offender registry.

And he agreed to an on-camera interview.

But the day before I was going to see him,

Chapman changed his mind about the camera crew.

I was told that if I wanted to talk to him,

I had to go in alone.

Wayne Chapman is, like, 6'4",

and I'm 5'1".

And he sat down right next to me.

I asked him about Andy.

And he said again

he didn't have anything to do

with Andy's disappearance

and he didn't know anything about Lawrence.

I had to remind him the reason he was in jail

was because he had raped two boys in Lawrence.

What was pretty scary to me

was I would not have known him on the street,

and I had stared at his picture.

I wouldn't have known him on the street.

He's an older-looking guy now.

His beard's white, his hair's white.

And his eyes were like something

I had never seen in my life before.

There was just nothing behind them.

There was no doubt in my mind

Wayne Chapman knew where Andy was.

But he said his lawyer told him not to talk to me.

Garvin: Wayne Chapman had petitioned to go before the court

and, uh, be deemed

no longer a sexually dangerous person.

He succeeded in this some time ago.

This time he's eligible for parole

and in a very short period of time.

There's a probability

that Chapman will be out on the streets very soon.

Erickson: I would never have recommended

Wayne Chapman for release,

and he knew that.

He found people who would.

Melanie: Are you predicting that when he's released,

he's gonna hurt another--

Oh, I'm certain he's gonna hurt somebody when he gets out.

There's no reason he wouldn't.

What has changed for Wayne Chapman?

What has changed?

Time doesn't cure this.

Sitting in a prison reading a Bible

does not cure sex offenders.

Mintz: I was assured that if he was deemed

a sexually dangerous person

that he would not come out of prison.

He would be in an institution forever.

The Lawrence police did not prosecute

or try to bring up evidence against him in Andy's abduction

because they felt like Chapman had been sentenced to life

in the treatment center.

Every single one of 'em told me,

"Oh, he was sent away for life. He's never getting out."

Mintz: I believe

that Wayne Chapman should have been

placed before the courts,

at least before a grand jury,

for the abduction and murder of Andy Puglisi.

That he could have been tried and convicted

based on circumstantial evidence.

♪♪

(indistinct children chattering)

Melanie: If child molesters gravitate to areas

where children are easily preyed upon,

then the state pool in Lawrence

was a pedophile's paradise.

(water splashes)

On a hot summer day in 1976,

there were typically 200 to 300 kids

swimming in the pool.

Across the street in the projects,

there was another couple hundred kids.

(water splashing)

Next to that was a junior high school

and an elementary school...

all within easy access to the highway.

But as it turns out,

at the time Andy was abducted,

there was a movement within the city of Lawrence

to zone the downtown area as a red light district.

♪♪

Several bookstores had been raided

for selling pornography,

and a number of local people had been arrested.

In fact, the guy that worked at the store

where Andy and I bought candy,

was arrested for selling child pornography.

(indistinct chatter)

It was clear to me:

Wayne Chapman was part of a larger community.

There were five known child molesters

at the pool that day.

Reporter: The police told you that?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, they were there.

They said they weren't breaking any laws,

so there was nothing they could do about it, you know,

but there was all those children laying prey.

(indistinct children chattering)

There's abundant evidence the pedophiles do communicate

with people of like interest.

There's abundant effort--

evidence that there's a trading of child pornography.

In many ways, there is a kind of collector mentality.

They trade images of children

like kids would trade baseball cards.

♪♪

Melanie: Just a few days before Andy disappeared,

he brought this Polaroid picture to his mother.

He told her it was one of several pictures

a strange man had asked him to pose for.

I asked the police to check the photo for fingerprints.

But after 28 years,

there was only a smudged thumb print

on the photo's edge.

Garvin: I believe there is an underworld of pedophiles.

Some people who do work in concert with others

who do tell their exploits to others

and maybe help each other

as far as farming the victims from one to another.

Not only is there a community of these individuals,

but there are actually groups,

there are advocacy groups

where these people join together

both to advocate fundamental changes in the law.

There are groups that would argue

that sex with children should not be criminalized.

But that sexual contact is essentially an act of love.

Melanie: Just a few months after Andy disappeared,

a child pornography ring was broken up

in Revere, Massachusetts,

a city just about 20 miles south of Lawrence.

NAMBLA, the North American

Man/Boy Love Association was born.

NAMBLA believes in legalizing the right

to have sex with children,

what they refer to as man/boy love.

Today, NAMBLA's one of the largest known organizations

of pedophiles in the world.

And to think it all started

right near where Andy and I lived.

-(people shouting) -(whistles blowing)

♪♪

Allen: In the late '70s and early '80s,

there was a time in which

a number of names of child victims

sort of became permanently etched

into the national consciousness.

And each case

sort of dramatized the inadequacy of the systems

we had in place in this country

to respond to the cases.

This was a nation of 50 states

that acted like 50 separate little countries

and 17,000 different police departments.

Mintz: Police departments have a lot of egos.

They want to be the ones who crack the case.

I think politics and money have a lot to do with it.

But as far as police departments cooperating with each other,

it's just the opposite.

They withhold information from each other.

Melanie: After years of researching the disappearance

of my childhood friend,

I was just beginning to understand

what I was dealing with.

Andy was one of several kids

who disappeared from the area in the '70s.

And most of these cases

haven't been looked at in years.

30 years have passed,

and the system hasn't really changed.

There's still no protocol in place

for cold cases involving missing kids.

In fact, there are bones

from hundreds of unidentified children

waiting to be tested in police departments

across the country.

♪♪

Mires: Andy represents all of the children...

that have been lost

and have fallen through the cracks in our society.

These cases don't go away. There isn't a resolution.

It'll never be over until that body's found.

It needs the dedication of so many individuals

all working towards the resolution,

with each respecting their specialty

and working as a team.

And once we do,

there's a very good possibility

that we will find Andy Puglisi's remains.

Mintz: I would like to add something.

I'm sorry for the...

police department's not carrying its own

or not pushing it hard enough

to go do follow up and find out the answers.

I did all I can do, but I'm sorry.

(film reel whirring)

(bells tolling)

(bells continue)

♪♪

Father O'Brien: Good evening, and welcome to St. Patrick's.

We come together to remember Andy

and to ask the lord to lead us forward in life.

Let us pause for a moment

and recognize we're in God's presence and pray.

God, our father, we thank you for the gift...

Melanie: In August of 2006,

30 years after he disappeared,

Andy's family held a candlelight service

at a local church for family and friends.

O'Brien: We ask this through Christ, our lord.

Melanie: The ceremony is the only church service

ever held in Andy's honor.

Melanie: Coming here tonight

and seeing Andy's family all under one roof

is really amazing, and...

Seeing his baby sister, Mandy, all grown-up

(voice breaking) was the moment for me...

because he loved you so much.

And he loved all of you so much.

And, um,

and now I do, too.

O'Brien: 30 years ago this week,

we had Andy taken away from us.

And 30 years later,

the memories and the love we have for him

are as strong as ever.

The truth is we really don't know what happened to Andy.

The truth also is it's very likely

that some of the worst darkness

that exists on this Earth came into his life.

Faith: For a lot of years,

I still believed in my heart

that any second now

he's gonna come walking through the door.

That was my story...

but he didn't.

And, uh, over the last week, two, three,

I've been able to admit some things to myself...

And I have to believe in my heart

that God stole his spirit away quickly...

and wiped away all the ugliness and all the pain.

I feel so blessed...

(voice breaking) to call myself Andy Puglisi's mother.

Is my heart sad?

Is my heart heavy?

You betcha.

I didn't get a chance to say good-bye.

I had no idea when he left that day

that was gonna be the last time.

That's a hard truth to face.

♪♪

Melanie: Despite everything,

a systematic search for Andy

still hasn't been done.

The police did eventually use ground radar,

but only in a small section of the woods.

And any evidence from the ground radar or excavations

is still sitting in the state police crime lab

waiting to be tested.

The state police and the District Attorney

continue to insist Andy's case

is an open investigation.

But when pressed for answers,

they say there just aren't enough resources.

There have been several offers of help

including ground radar equipment,

lab facilities,

and forensic experts at no cost.

The police have turned down every offer

without explanation.

♪♪

I just can't help thinking of all the missed opportunities.

If people's egos weren't involved,

and resources weren't limited...

maybe Andy would still be here today.

58,000 children are abducted every year in America.

Of those, 115 vanish without a trace.

This is the story of one of those children.

My friend Andy.

♪♪

♪♪